Pete,
Your aluminium mooring cleats will be anodised, hope so anyway. This helps
resist corrosion. Where stainless steel fasteners or other parts are in
contact with aluminium parts the joints should be smeared with a zinc
chromate corrosion inhibiting paste such as Duralac. This is a bright yellow
paste, you can buy a tube from a chandler or from the internet for about
£10. If stainless steel fasteners fitted into aluminium are exposed to salt
water you will get corrosion of the aluminium to white corrosion product,
the inhibiting paste certainly helps to reduce this.

Allthough this combination of materials is not ideal, it is the best
practical solution for much hardware on sailing boats, obviously there are a
great many aluminium masts with stainless steel fittings attached and they
last a long time.

As for aluminium wood screws, they do exist, as you can tell from an
internet search, but as far as I am aware they are not something you can buy
from high street shops.

John



"pete" wrote in message
...
Hi all,
I have bought some aluminium mooring cleats with holes threaded in the
underside to be fixed with bolts from under the deck. I know there are
isues with stainless and aluminium but as there should be no water
ingress to the threads is it ok to use stainless bolts? Or is there
still going to be corrosion.



It's just that I have a load in stock and I'd rather not go and buy a
load more in alloy!

On another issue, I have the fairleads to go with them, but these need
to be screwed with a wood screw from above into the beam shelf. I
don't see anybody selling alloy wood screws so I suppose its stainless
there. So (as salt water is going to be continually sprayed over them)
should there be some sort of protection (paste or plastic) between the
screw and the fitting?

Pete